What a wonderful memory.

I always wanted to be a cowboy. I even met Roy Rogers once at Gimble’s Department store in Philadelphia. My grandmother who was s seamstress made me a gray gabardine cowboy shirt just like Roy’s. It had aqua yokes in front and back with embroidered cactuses & horses and pearl snap buttons. It was the real thing. I remember she took me all the way up to Camden once to see the latest Roy Rogers film the very first one in Technicolor! We sat in the balcony and they even had a stage show with live horses and cowboys. I was thrilled to the bone. When we got home I had her make me some action figures. Of course, we didn’t have a name for them the term action figure hadn’t been coined yet. She made them from scraps of denim for the pants and checkered cloth for the shirts. We put them over pipe cleaner skeletons. And I cut a picture of Roy’s head from a comic book and pasted head on the top of it. She made Roy, Dale & a few outlaws who Roy could beat the crap out of before he rode off into the sunset with Dale to do things even a five year old boy couldn’t imagine.

When I was a little girl, growing up in Durham, NC, every year the Chesterfield Tobacco Co had a parade. One year Matt Dillon rode his horse in the parade. It was the most awesome thing I had ever seen. I dreamed of having a horse that beautiful some day, and rode a stick for miles pretending and dreaming. My dream finally came true when I was 38, so childhood dreams can become reality. Thanks for sharing your story. I still watch Gunsmoke and Roy Rogers too, Glenda